When Aileen Lee, the former Kleiner Perkins partner and founder of the seed-stage venture capital firm Cowboy Ventures, coined the term “unicorn” in 2013 on this very site, there were just 39 companies that had earned the title. She called them “the lucky/genius few.” Her definition: U.S. software startups launched since 2003 worth more than

Elon Musk has shot out some crazy, unbelievable tweets over the last year, but he wasn’t joking about the bricks. Musk has started a company called The Brick Store LLC to produce and sell bricks, according to public documents obtained by TechCrunch. The new company, which was founded in July, will be managed by Steve

Walmart has overtaken Apple to become the No. 3 online retailer in the U.S., according to a report this week from eMarketer. While Amazon still leads by a wide margin, accounting for 48 percent of e-commerce sales in 2018, Walmart – including also Sam’s Club and Jet.com – is poised to capture 4 percent of

Fortnite, the free multi-player survival game, has earned an astonishing $1 billion from in-game virtual purchases alone. Now, others in the gaming industry are experimenting with how they too can capitalize on new trends in gaming. Mythical Games, a startup out of stealth today with $16 million in Series A funding, is embracing a future in

YouTube quietly added around 100 ad-supported Hollywood movies to its site, beginning last month, according to a new report from AdAge. The titles include a mix of classics like “Rocky” and “The Terminator,” as well as other family fare like “Zookeeper,” “Agent Cody Banks,” and “Legally Blonde,” among others. Before, YouTube had only offered consumers

Traditional network security vulnerabilities are bad enough without adding SDN security issues to the mix. But, as organizations deploy SDN, they risk exposing their networks to new types of threats and attacks, especially if they don’t have proper plans in place. A prevalent concern with SDN security focuses on the SDN controller. The controller contains

Without any notable opposition to the Senate’s version of the bill, the House agreed to a reorganization of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) Act earlier this week, according to FCW. Replacing the National Protection and Programs Directorate, the new agency will oversee the cybersecurity of federal computer systems and will be a government liaison

by John E Dunn How many computer users still regularly use Windows XP? It’s a trick question, of course, because the answer is that millions of people do every time they take money out of an ATM cash machine; a significant proportion of which still run some variant of the geriatric OS. It’s a finding

When the security industry characterizes the e-crime threat landscape, there is a temptation to focus on the everyday scams and high-volume aspect of the criminal threat landscape. These criminals are not particular about targets if there are financial rewards at the end. Obvious examples of these types of scams are the widely distributed malware aimed

If you’re a gamer, you know how important virtual currency is. It allows you to purchase new costumes and weapons to personalize your avatar. But how does one go about gaining virtual currency? Players complete in-game challenges and are rewarded with coins to spend in their virtual world. These challenges can be pretty difficult and

Almost all young people recycle their passwords, often doing so across work and personal accounts The prevalence of cybersecurity incidents and the concomitant growing concerns about any organization’s cybersecurity posture haven’t done much to discourage many employees from engaging in poor security habits, a survey has found. In some respects, employees’ cyber-hygiene is actually getting

Has Wikileaks founder Julian Assange officially been charged with any unspecified criminal offense in the United States? — YES United States prosecutors have accidentally revealed the existence of criminal charges against Wikileaks founder Julian Assange in a recently unsealed court filing in an unrelated ongoing sex crime case in the Eastern District of Virginia. Assistant

Welcome to TechCrunch’s 2018 Holiday Gift Guide! Need more gift ideas? Check out our Gift Guide Hub. “How do I start a podcast?” As the producer of the TechCrunch podcast Equity, I get this question all the time. Fortunately, it’s easier than ever to get your voice out there, even on a shoestring budget. As

In a turn of events that reads like a plot point from an unreleased Coen Brothers script, information has surfaced revealing that prosecutors have charged embattled Wikileaks founder, Julian Assange. The information came to light as part of the recently unsealed filing of a seemingly unrelated sex crimes case. How Assange’s name and fate appeared

Despite the session’s name, “Two Points of View: Collaboration and Disclosure: Balancing Openness About Cyber Security with Managing Risk and Reputation,” panelists at today’s Infosecurity North America conference were actually in agreement about sharing threat intelligence. Moderated by Joseph Gittens, director, standards, Security Industry Association, the panelists explored the different channels by which information can and

by Paul Ducklin Twice a year, an international contest called Pwn2Own – the Olympic Games of competitive hacking, if you like – gives the world’s top bug-hunters a chance to show off their skills. The word pwn, if you aren’t familiar with it already, is hacker jargon for “own”, as in “owning” someone’s computer –

On October 4, 2018, a Bloomberg Businessweek article alleged that in 2015, manufacturers inserted microchips onto the motherboards of servers destined for U.S. public and government organizations to provide Chinese government-sponsored threat actors with unauthorized access. The story was immediately refuted in its entirety by the three companies named in the story: Apple, Amazon, and

The Americas Partner Summit 2018 was held on Tuesday, October 16 at MPOWER Cybersecurity Summit. It was a day filled with McAfee and partner leadership coming together to collaborate on McAfee’s partner strategy, product portfolio, programs, and more. Here are some of the highlights: The Audience 338 partners 225 VAR, Disti, MSP, etc. 35 OEM

Industry standard specification does not guarantee the safety of the self-encrypting drives despite verification The need to encrypt data on devices has never been greater, especially with legislation such as the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). Purchasing a self-encrypting drive (SED) that adheres to the industry standard, published as the Trusted Computing Group’s

We live in an age where data flows like water, becoming the new life source of our everyday ventures. As such, you can just imagine what all of that entails and the weight that data receive, especially when it comes to a decision making on how to handle this fairly new and arguably invaluable resource.

Facebook has changed its News Feed algorithm to demote content that comes close to violating its policies prohibiting misinformation, hate speech, violence, bullying, clickbait so it’s seen by fewer people even it’s highly engaging. In a 5000-word letter by Mark Zuckerberg published today, he explained how a “basic incentive problem” that “when left unchecked, people

Don’t miss your chance to bear witness as a cohort of sub-Saharan Africa’s exceptional entrepreneurs launch their early-stage tech startups to the world. Startup Battlefield Africa 2018, our premier pitch competition, takes place on 11 December in Lagos, Nigeria. Join us to cheer on the competitors and enjoy a series of outstanding panel discussions from

Okta Inc. researchers discovered a bypass that allows threat actors to create malware that can pose as legitimate software files signed by Apple. What is this bypass and who does it affect? Because regular users sometimes find it difficult to know what is and isn’t safe on the internet or when installing software, software developers

Finding and keeping talent in the cybersecurity industry is a challenge for organizations of all sizes around the globe. As a result, the talent market is highly competitive, which is why a panel of experts came together at this year’s Infosecurity North America conference in New York to talk about building an effective cybersecurity team

by John E Dunn Cybercriminals have returned to old-school manual hacking tactics to boost the efficiency of targeted extortion, according to research conducted for the SophosLabs 2019 Threat Report. Ransomware attacks are nothing new, but well known examples like CryptoLocker or WannaCry have tended to be opportunistic and indiscriminate. To penetrate their targets they rely on

Cryptocurrency mining is the way transactions are verified and added to the public ledger, a database of all the transactions made around a particular piece of cryptocurrency. Cryptocurrency miners compile all of these transactions into blocks and try to solve complicated mathematical problems to compete with other miners for bitcoins. To do this, miners need

How much higher are the odds that your device will be exposed to malware if you download apps from outside Google Play or if you use one of Android’s older versions? Google has the numbers You need to stick to Google Play for apps and run as recent a version of Android as possible if

Disclosed earlier this year, potentially dangerous Meltdown and Spectre vulnerabilities that affected a large family of modern processors proven that speculative execution attacks can be exploited in a trivial way to access highly sensitive information. Since then, several more variants of speculative execution attacks have been discovered, including Spectre-NG, SpectreRSB, Spectre 1.1, Spectre1.2, TLBleed, Lazy

Welcome to TechCrunch’s 2018 Holiday Gift Guide! Need more gift ideas? Check out our Gift Guide Hub. I’ve been traveling a lot this year — more than any year in the past. It’s been both a blessing and a curse, so thanks, TechCrunch, for that. Honestly, I should probably be packing for Asia instead of

Mintos, the Latvian fintech that operates a global loans marketplace to let you invest in loans from various loan originators, has raised €5 million in Series A funding. Backing the startup once again is the Riga-based venture capital firm Grumpy Investments (previously known as Skillion Ventures). More noteworthy, the new capital will be used to